Division Street

Wouldn’t you know it, one of the big winners amidst $12 million in payouts to victims of City Hall’s rigged hiring system turns out to be an alderman’s son.

Not that Jay Stone isn’t necessarily deserving of his whopping $75,000 check to make up for a losing aldermanic challenge to former 32nd Ward Ald. Ted Matlak (D-Machine), but geez, what about the folks like Cynthia Moody, who was awarded $1,500 for being rebuffed - for political reasons - seven years’ straight in her attempt to get a job as a “hand laborer” in Streets and San?

So all we have to show for that epic 2006 battle over Wal-Mart that ended with the mayor accusing those in favor of higher wages of being racists is . . . one lousy store on the West Side?

A proposed Wal-Mart supercenter in Chatham on the South Side always had some difficult obstacles to overcome, but Wal-Mart’s super expansion into the city appears seriously stalled.

The Tribune editorial page today argues that the city and the Chatham developers should rescind their promise to not bring a Wal-Mart to 83rd and Stewart.

But even a measly second store hardly seems a good return on the company’s investment so far.

An embarrassed City Hall has put the kibosh on James Duff ever doing business with the city again.

“That mistake left a gaping opportunity for career critics of this administration, as well as people with legitimate concerns, to criticize the mayor and question his judgment,” mayoral spokeswoman Jackie Heard told the Tribune.

Oh, the audacity.

“White Duff family members fraudulently obtained $100 million in janitorial contracts earmarked for minorities and women,” the Sun-Times reminds us this morning.

“Until the scandal broke, [Mayor] Daley had accepted campaign contributions and political foot soldiers provided by the Duff family and attended their Christmas parties.”

Unbelievably, the new procurement officer who made the blunder told the S-T that he never read the case file and that “I didn’t know the Duffs from the Diffs.”

Curiously, after the scandal broke, the mayor said the same thing.

Mayor Richard M. Daley’s occasional commitments to cracking down on corruption in his administration always ring hollow to anyone paying close attention, but the brazenness with which his administration behaves continues to amaze.

Today’s outrage comes courtesy of a Tribune exclusive that James Duff and his Windy City Maintenance, key players at the center of one of Daley’s signature scandals, will be allowed to conduct business with the city again in just three years. The city’s inspector general, whom Daley has undermined at every step, sought a lifetime ban.

“When someone is convicted of a massive racketeering, fraud and money laundering scheme involving city contracts, in which the city taxpayers are the victim,” Hoffman said, “the city should say to that person, ‘You have forfeited your opportunity to compete for city contracts.’ Period.”

Not in Daley’s Chicago, David, where “inspector general” means you are merely generally inspecting. Feel like you’re being played for a chump yet?

Having already delivered “salutes . . . in the Chicago way” to drivers he felt endangered him as a bicyclist, Mayor Daley is behind an ordinance moving through the city council that would fine motorists up to $500 for endangering our two-wheeled friends.

My Beachwood Reporter colleague Cate Plys begs to differ. “My God I’m tired of hearing bikers whine about their lot,” Plys writes. “[P]erhaps the most laughable part about Mayor Daley’s proposed ordinance . . . fines drivers for passing a bike within less than three feet. Ha! The vast majority of cars steer as wide around bikes as they possibly can, often veering into the next lane or over the yellow line to do it. It’s the bikers who like to squeeze into tight spaces. Then they’re surprised when a driver doesn’t realize they’ve materialized inches away.”